


Shadow Seduction and Filmmaking

by Riona



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season 4, selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you're going to have an affair with your evil alternate-universe self, Jeff realises too late, it's probably a good idea to be discreet about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow Seduction and Filmmaking

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for the kind reception of my first _Community_ fic! Here is my second. I'm afraid I have no excuse for this.
> 
> This is set after the fourth season. I haven't yet seen the fifth, so I'm sorry if this conflicts with it!

The study room falls silent when Jeff walks in, which is usually a bad sign. He sits down, cautiously, and waits for things to go wrong.

“Jeff,” Britta says, in what Jeff can only assume is an attempt to sound gentle and understanding, “this is an intervention.”

Jeff snorts. “I don’t need an intervention.”

“Yes, you do,” Britta says. “Abed filmed you in here last Friday—”

Jeff turns to glare at Abed. Abed looks back at him, entirely unaffected.

“—and the footage is what is known in the world of psychotherapy as ‘super disturbing’.”

Troy whimpers.

“I think we should all watch this together,” Britta says, “and then you can tell the group what was going through your head at the time.”

Troy whimpers harder. “I still see it when I close my eyes.”

“Are you sure about this?” Shirley asks. “’Cause I haven’t seen this yet, but I’m getting the feeling it’s going to be some pretty unholy stuff.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure about this plan either,” Jeff says, trying to think back to Friday. It’s when Evil Jeff came to visit, he’s pretty sure, but Evil Jeff only exists in his head, right? What the hell is on that footage?

“I insist,” Britta says, smiling grimly. “Abed, the DVD?”

“I lent it to Annie,” Abed says.

Annie turns scarlet and ducks down behind the table. There’s a rustling sound, and after a moment her hand emerges and holds a DVD in a clear plastic case out to Shirley. The rest of Annie stays where it is.

Shirley tentatively takes the DVD between forefinger and thumb, holding it like it’s a bag full of dog waste, and near-throws it across the table to Britta. Annie’s hand retreats back out of sight.

Jeff watches the progress of the disc with a kind of nervous fascination. Whatever’s on that DVD, considering Troy’s quiet sobbing and Britta’s general Britta-ness, it’s probably not an episode of _Inspector Spacetime_ , and this group watchalong is probably going to be more than a little weird. But he can’t say he isn’t curious. _Is_ it Evil Jeff? Will he actually show up on the footage? Their encounter felt so real that it’s hard to believe it was really all in his head.

“Are we all going to gather around Abed’s laptop, then?” he asks.

“Oh, crap, right!” Britta exclaims, and she runs out of the room. In a perfect world she’d never return and Jeff wouldn’t have to deal with whatever this is right now, but because this is Greendale she’s back in a few minutes, pushing a book cart with some heavy-looking electrical equipment on it. She unloads it onto the table: a DVD player, and connected to it...

Jeff raises his eyebrows. “You hired a projector?”

“I thought, you know, the six of us standing around a laptop... it’d be weird. Being so close to each other. With what we’re about to see.”

This doesn’t bode well.

“It’ll be up over there,” Britta says, waving a hand at the whiteboard on Annie and Shirley’s side of the table. “Shirley, Annie, you can come over to this side if you want to see it better.”

“I’m fine,” Annie’s voice says, oddly high-pitched. She has, from the sound of it, moved from behind the table to hide underneath it.

“Okay,” Britta says. “Shirley?”

Shirley shakes her head. “Uh-uh. I’m gonna sit right here and face the table.”

She is not, Jeff notes, going to leave, which is surely the course of action that makes most sense if she doesn’t want to see any of this. To be honest, he isn’t surprised.

“All right,” Britta says. “Brace yourself, people who haven’t seen this. I mean, I guess that’s just Shirley, if you don’t count Jeff. Brace yourself, Shirley.”

“Abed,” Jeff says, “next time you film me without my permission, can you maybe show me the footage _before_ using it for one of your film nights?”

-

Okay. Seeing it from outside, Jeff has to admit it looks a little strange.

He’s making out with the air. He can remember what he was experiencing, can remember having one hand on Evil Jeff’s waist and the other in his perfect hair as Evil Jeff pushed him back onto the table, but it looks a hell of a lot like he’s got one hand on nothing and his other hand on a slightly higher-up nothing and he’s tonguing empty space as he slowly sits down.

Somehow, the thing that embarrasses him the most in all this is how much it looks like he’s _submitting_ to the nothing. Does Evil Jeff have that much power over him?

“I think you need therapy,” Britta says, watching him intently. “Do you think you need therapy?”

A moan echoes through the room, and Jeff winces. “Can someone turn the volume down?”

Shirley nods fervently. She’s still facing the table, although Jeff’s caught her sneaking occasional peeks at the footage.

“I’m pretty sure you need therapy,” Britta says. “My rates are _very_ reasonable.”

“Britta, I’m not going to – oh, hey, that explains a lot.” On the projection, he’s started to unbutton his own shirt. He’s been wondering how Evil Jeff definitely _actually_ managed to get his clothes off despite not being real.

“ _Jeffrey!_ ” the Dean’s voice suddenly booms, magnified a million times. It’s absolutely terrifying, and Jeff almost flings himself under the table to join Annie before realising that it’s part of the recording; no one’s turned down the volume yet.

Wait. The Dean was _there_?

The Dean bounds onto the whiteboard, wearing an enormous squirrel tail, and freezes. Clutches his hand over his heart. Stares at Jeff, who by this point is half-lying on the table, eyes closed, and slowly divesting himself of his clothing, and making periodic humiliating whimpering noises that his entire study group can now hear because seriously, _where is the goddamn volume control?_

Jeff shifts a little in his seat. This is... he hates to admit it, but this is kind of hot. He doesn’t know whether it’s the memory of his encounter with Evil Jeff or actually _watching himself_ that’s turning him on. Either way, this seems pretty narcissistic.

Maybe it’s too late to worry about narcissism once you’ve banged your alternate-universe self.

It’s not that weird, is it? He’s an attractive guy. Is he supposed to suddenly not be attracted to attractive people just because they show up in his mirror sometimes? That seems unreasonable.

The fact that his friends are watching this with him isn’t making his clothes feel any less constrictive right now, and it only gets worse when he remembers that Abed was actually physically there, when he pictures Britta watching it for the first time, when he thinks about Annie borrowing the disc. Even Shirley’s judgemental stare seems to raise the room’s temperature. Is this something he needs to worry about?

He tries to focus on the Dean. The Dean is literally the only thing about this entire situation he doesn’t find erotic. Jeff feels he should probably be concerned about how screwed up this makes him, but really he’s just glad to know he still has boundaries _somewhere_.

Eventually, the Dean tears his eyes away from the display for long enough to glance at the camera.

“ _Abed,_ ” he says, his voice hushed. He clears his throat and nods towards Jeff, who by now is mostly nude and quite clearly furiously jerking off someone who isn’t there. “ _Do you happen to know whether Jeffrey is waiting for someone to, ah, step in?_ ”

Jeff lunges for the DVD player and hits the pause button.

“I refuse to keep watching this if the Dean steps in,” he says. “I seriously mean this. If he steps in and you show me, I will stab everyone at this table.”

“So you don’t remember!” Britta exclaims, triumphantly. “Repressed memories are _exactly_ the kind of thing you need a therapist for!”

“I remember this,” Jeff says. “I just wasn’t... aware of my surroundings, let’s say. Please tell me the Dean doesn’t step in.”

“He doesn’t,” Annie’s voice says miserably from under the table, somewhere between Troy and Abed. Troy gives a startled yelp and falls off his chair.

“Annie,” Jeff says, frowning in her approximate direction, “what are you doing over there?”

No answer. Troy clambers back onto his seat, looking serious. He nods thoughtfully, presumably to give the impression that by falling off his chair he has achieved some sort of goal.

“Are you very slowly trying to get away from me?” Jeff asks.

No answer.

“Because so long as the Dean doesn’t get involved, I seriously don’t care if you borrowed this,” Jeff says. He glances back at the image frozen on the whiteboard: his own mouth slightly open, his hair the perfect amount of tousled, his abs glistening. “Actually, maybe I’ll borrow it myself.”

“That’s weird, dude,” Troy mutters.

“Anyway, if Annie’s telling the truth, I guess we should keep watching,” Jeff says. He nods at Britta, who’s the closest to the DVD player. She gives him an odd look, but she presses ‘play’.

Abed doesn’t respond to the Dean’s question; he just keeps operating the camera in silence. The Dean stares at Jeff, and stares, and stares, and walks around the table several times to stare at him from every angle as Jeff – both on the footage and, although he tries very hard to hide it, in reality – slowly becomes more and more undone.

His hand stays out of his pants, Jeff tells himself, firmly. He can be turned on; that’s basically unavoidable. He cannot actually jerk himself off while sitting at the table with his study group. Maybe it’s strange to lay down standards when they’re all watching his accidental soft porn debut, but that is his creepy line in the sand, and he is not going to cross it.

Eventually, the Dean comes back to Abed. “ _Is there any chance you might be interested in... selling this recording?_ ”

“Oh, _that’s_ an idea,” Jeff says, trying very hard to keep his voice from veering off into ‘weird and breathy’. “Did you ask how much he’d pay you?”

“Stop talking!” Britta hisses. “This is my favourite part!”

She has a favourite part? That can’t be good news. Jeff frantically tries to remember what was going on in his head at this moment.

On the projection, Jeff throws back his head and moans his own name. Clearly and unmistakably. His own name.

The Dean passes out.

Britta cracks up laughing. Shirley stares at Jeff. Jeff has the fortitude to hold her gaze for almost half a second before he has to look up at the ceiling.

The film ends. Jeff, to his mild concern, finds himself disappointed that they don’t get to see the part where he really gives it to Evil Jeff.

“So,” Britta says, obviously trying and failing to push down her laughter and sound sympathetic. “Jeff. Tell us why this happened. We all want to help you.”

What can he say here that won’t make him seem weird? Literally nothing. There is no non-weird explanation for this. Is there anything he can say that will only make him seem _slightly_ weird?

“C’mon, you guys can’t tell me you don’t call out your own name when you masturbate,” Jeff says.

“Uh, yeah, _obviously_ we do,” Troy says, drawing stares from everyone but Abed, “but that was not right. If that was masturbating, I’ve been doing it seriously wrong this whole time.”

Jeff barely has time to enjoy not being the focal point of the whole table before the eyes are back on him.

“I think the question we should be asking is why Abed decided to film it,” he says.

“He’s Abed,” Shirley says.

Damn. She has a good point. Persuading the others that he himself is Abed and therefore does not need to offer an explanation probably isn’t an option here.

“Okay,” he says. “I was having sex with Evil Jeff, from that parallel universe Abed’s always talking about.”

Abed nods. “That’s what I thought.”

Britta huffs. “If you’re not going to take this therapy session _seriously_ —”

“First of all,” Jeff interrupts her, “I promise you that I am in no way taking this seriously. This is not a therapy session, and you are not a therapist. Second, what kind of serious response were you expecting to get? I want you to think over every possible explanation for that video and tell me if there are any that are not ridiculous.”

Britta hesitates. “Well, maybe it was a prank.”

“Then it was a prank,” Jeff says, “and I don’t need therapy.”

Shirley shakes her head. “I can’t say I’m so sure. That is _not_ a normal prank to play on your friends.”

“I guess I was having sex with Evil Jeff, then.” He raps his knuckles on the table. “Annie? You all right down there?”

“I’m fine,” Annie says. She emerges from under the table at last, at the point exactly opposite Jeff, and walks quickly around to sit in her usual seat. Jeff tries to catch her eye, but she keeps her head down and won’t look at him.

There’s a pause.

Annie swallows hard. “So... Evil Jeff?” she asks, staring hard at the tabletop. “So there were two of you?”

“If you want to picture the scene, he was almost as good-looking as me,” Jeff says. “Expensive suit, which he wouldn’t trust me to take off, even though I totally know how to take care of clothes. He had a kind of high-tech prosthetic arm. Apparently Evil Troy and Evil Abed developed it for him. He didn’t like to wear it during sex, though.”

At one point Evil Jeff called him ‘Annie’. Should he mention that? Probably a weird detail, if all this has been happening in his head.

Annie lets out an odd little shuddering breath.

Britta’s eyes have gone wide. “Please let me study you.”

“No,” Jeff says. He pushes back his chair and stands up. “Is that everything? Because honestly, if we’re just going to sit around asking questions about my imaginary sex life with my evil doppelganger, I’d prefer to actually be _having_ imaginary sex with my evil doppelganger. Abed, can I take that DVD with me?”

“Sorry, Jeff,” Abed says, “but it’s my entry at the Greendale Film Festival. There’s a public screening in an hour. You can have it after that.”

Jeff closes his eyes for a moment.

“Abed,” he says, opening them, “I think that footage should just stay between you and me, and I guess the rest of the study group, and...” He looks up and frowns. The windows of the study room are crowded with fascinated, horrified faces. “And everyone in the library, apparently. Nobody thought to close the blinds?”

There is a long silence, during which Jeff stares into the eyes of every person at the windows individually. They all shy away from his gaze. He feels powerful.

“I guess I could withdraw my entry,” Abed says, eventually.

“Thanks.” Jeff presses the eject button on the player and pockets the disc. “As compensation, you can sell the Dean a copy and keep whatever he gives you.”

He makes for the exit. Freezes mid-stride.

Evil Jeff is in the doorway.

“Should’ve known I’d find you here,” Evil Jeff says, walking him back against the table. “You’ve graduated, but you still can’t stop coming back, can you?”

“Everyone’s here,” Jeff whispers. Everyone’s here. Is that hot? That shouldn’t be hot.

“Jeffrey?” Shirley asks from behind him, sounding puzzled and concerned.

Evil Jeff smirks against Jeff’s neck, because apparently he’s going for the neck already? Apparently they’re going straight into this? The blinds are still open and this is a terrible idea.

“You guys might want to leave,” Jeff says, trying to keep his voice steady. “This is about to get really weird.”

“I’ll get my camera,” Abed says.


End file.
